Nederlandse regering wenst structurele hervorming VN-klimaatpanel

Een opmerkelijk initiatief, zonder precedent!

Gastbijdrage van Marcel Crok, auteur van de 'Staat van het klimaat. Een koele blik op een verhit debat.'

Marcel Crok:

Dutch advise to IPCC: limiting the scope to human induced climate change is undesirable

Governments around the world have been asked by IPCC to think about the future of the IPCC. The Netherlands now sent their submission to the IPCC and made it available on the website of KNMI. I would say Holland is fairly critical about how IPCC is operating right now. This part struck me as most interesting:

The IPCC needs to adjust its principles. We believe that limiting the scope of the IPCC to human induced climate change is undesirable, especially because natural climate change is a crucial part of the total understanding of the climate system, including human-induced climate change. The Netherlands is also of the opinion that the word ‘comprehensive’ may have to be deleted, because producing comprehensive assessments becomes virtually impossible with the ever expanding body of knowledge and IPCC may be more relevant by producing more special reports on topics that are new and controversial.

I agree with both points. The (almost) obsession of IPCC with greenhouse forcing has greatly limited progress in climate science in my opinion, so I am glad my government now raises this point. And in my (Dutch) book, 'De Staat van het Klimaat', I concluded that IPCC in AR4 had not succeeded to come up with a “comprehensive” report. I also agree IPCC should pay much more attention to controversial topics. The treatment of controversial topics in AR4 and also AR5 was and is unsatisfactory for two reasons: there is not enough space reserved to go into the necessary details and the author teams are almost always biased in favor of the consensus view and therefore not giving enough credit to minority views.

The Netherlands also want to make an end to the huge volumes IPCC is producing and replace it by shorter web-based (special) reports:

The IPCC needs more transparent, focused and up-to-date assessments. The use of the internet continues to expand. It would be easier to keep IPCC assessments up to date if they would be fully web-based.

Digitalisation also increases the transparency of the reports. For example, in addition to internal links in the SPM to the underlying chapters (already done for AR4), links can be added in the chapters to the relevant parts of scientific publications to simplify the accessibility to the sources.

The assessment should be more dynamic by regular updates of the chapters, with only one round of expert review, and by shortening the assessment cycle. The reports are currently perceived to be quite dated already a few years after they have been published.

Again I agree with the new format. Also Holland wants to merge WGI and WGII into one working group:

two working groups instead of three. For example, it is possible to expand WGI to include WGII subjects that are closely connected to the information in WGI. An example is the SREX special report, where climate extremes and risk-based information are combined. WGIII would then include adaptation and mitigation measures and their environmental impacts. In this way there would be two working groups, which would shorten the cycle but will also to improve the consistency in the assessment cycle and facilitates the synthesis. A separate Synthesis Report would not be needed if the second WG would synthesize its information with the first WG, also in its summaries.

Pachauri

Without mentioning his name The Netherlands make clear that they would like to see Pachauri retire. They prefer “having an organization that is led by an Executive Director” instead of an elected chair. “An Executive Director could also more easily be a policy-neutral spokesperson than an elected Chair”, they write, thereby implicitly referring to Pachauri who is renowned for making policy statements.

Skeptics

So in general I am very happy with the advise and I am convinced that the IPCC would greatly improve if all these points will be brought into practice. The only thing I am really missing is the explicit advise to involve skeptics in the process. This was actually the main advise in my book: add two skeptics to each lead author team to keep the mainstream scientists honest. This simple advise is the only way IPCC can ever become more balanced and objective.

However, congratulations to the Dutch government for taking this critical stance.

Aldus Marcel Crok.

Onder de titel, 'Nederland nu officieel voor afschaffing van klimaatbijbel', legt Hajo Smit op de website Climategate.nl nog eens uit wat de betekenis van dit voorstel is ten behoeve van mensen die de zaak slechts op afstand hebben gevolgd.

Hajo Smit:

Er rest ons hier niets te doen dan te verwijzen naar een uitstekende blogpost van Marcel Crok - ook al opgepikt door Bennie Peiser van thegwpf.org – die Nederland weliswaar in het Engels vertrouwd maakt met wat het KNMI als officieel advies aan het IPCC heeft geadviseerd. OK we kunnen natuurlijk nog een poging doen de statements te populistisch te vertalen en zo meer begrijpelijk te maken voor Jan met de Pet.

Daar gaan we:

? Het IPCC heeft de wereld bedonderd door met oogkleppen op alleen te kijken naar door de mens veroorzaakte klimaatverandering de wereld bedonderd door met oogkleppen op alleen te kijken naar door de mens veroorzaakte klimaatverandering.

? Het is niet meer te ontkennen dat natuurlijke klimaatverandering het klimaatsysteem stuurt en daarom moeten de oogkleppen af.

? Het was een fout en onwetenschappelijk om te streven naar een alomvattende klimaatbijbel

? Het was bedrieglijk om de wereld te doen geloven dat er in de wetenschap zoiets als consensus over een klimaatbijbel zou kunnen bestaan.

? Het is belangrijk nieuwe en controversiële wetenschappelijke inzichten ruim baan te geven en ehhhh . hadden we daar niet de 'journals' voor?

? Pachauri moet weg.

Hier de link naar de pdf 'Submission by The Netherlands on the future of the IPCC' van het KNMI.

Aldus Hajo Smit.

Kortom, een reuzenstap in de goede richting! Laten we hopen dat een meerderheid het Nederlandse initiatief zal steunen. Dat lijkt mij overigens niet zeker, want voor de AGW–extremisten is niet veel fantasie nodig om dit voorstel als een paard van Troje te zien.

Voor bestelling van 'De staat van het klimaat' van Marcel Crok, klik:

http://www.staatvanhetklimaat.nl/boek-bestellen/ 

Voor mijn eerdere DDS–bijdragen, zie hier.